Nordstrom Acquires 2 Digital Retail Start-Ups: BevyUp and MessageYes

Nordstrom continues to invest in omnichannel strategies and technology that adapts to consumer shopping patterns. To support these efforts, the retailer is acquiring two leading Seattle-based tech companies: digital selling tool BevyUp, and conversational commerce company MessageYes. The two deals are a part of Nordstrom’s approach to creating a seamless omnichannel shopping customer experience.

After all, while Nordstrom has been lauded for its customer service since it opened in 1901, those interactions have primarily been in brick-and-mortar stores. These new digital platforms will service customers wherever they are, whenever they want.

“We’re investing in providing our salespeople with a mobile suite of capabilities that enables them to be relevant, informative and accessible to our customers,” said Brian Gill, technology senior vice president at Nordstrom. “As a leader in retail technology and an existing Nordstrom partner, BevyUp is uniquely positioned to help us deliver for our people and our customers.”

HOW THEY WORK:

BevyUp extends the sales associates’ customer relationships beyond brick-and- mortar stores. Stylists use BevyUp’s mobile clienteling app, Style Boards, to provide their customers with a personalized, omnichannel experience. BevyUp’s digital selling platform will be incorporated into a new, integrated mobile Nordstrom employee app that will be rolled out in the coming year.

“BevyUp was founded on the simple idea that retailers could develop meaningful connections with their customers. We’ve helped revolutionize the customer experience by extending a salesperson’s relationships beyond the confines of brick-and-mortar stores. Becoming a part of the Nordstrom team gives us the opportunity to take our combined efforts even farther,” said Mauricio Cuevas, founder and CEO of BevyUp.

MessageYes‘ mission is to help people effortlessly discover and purchase items they love using their mobile phones. MessageYes is the first platform to offer frictionless e-commerce over mobile messaging for brands looking to engage and transact directly with their customers. Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), human-assisted AI, and integrated payments, the MessageYes platform learns from customer feedback to make the experience serendipitous to each person and brand. Message recipients simply reply “Yes” to instantly buy from their mobile phones.

“MessageYes marks a meaningful addition to our existing depth of talent and experience in engineering, data science and machine learning – all skills that are essential to our future growth,” said Gill. “We share the same vision for the future of retail, and their team will accelerate our efforts to deliver a meaningful, personalized experience for our customers.”

“Nordstrom has succeeded in building emotional relationships with their customers – creating connections that go well beyond a transaction,” says Dave Cotter, founder and CEO of MessageYes.. When we started MessageYes, that’s exactly what we wanted to do. Joining Nordstrom enables us to take a lot of our concepts and integrate them across all of the channels Nordstrom uses to serve customers.”